Historic Districts in the United States now number over 8,000; the
phenomenon of the Historic District has been of special interest to
those concerned with historic preservation and town planning, but
there has not yet been an analysis of such districts' significance
from a historian's point of view. History in Urban Places explores
the connections between American urban history and historic
preservation.
A frequent criticism of historic districts is that they convey
sanitized versions of the past and that their creation is prompted
more by the needs of present-day real estate values, the impulse to
gentrify, or the urgent need to rehabilitate inner-city areas than
by a desire to preserve the past. David Hamer claims that historic
districts are best understood as part of the growth and development
of urban communities -- examples of applied urban history that
should be studied as such.
Hamer argues that four stages of history are represented by
historic districts. The first is the history that the district
actually embodies; the second is the story of what happened to the
district from the time the historically significant events occurred
until the present, when those events are judged to be significant;
the third is the process leading to the district's classification
as historic; and the fourth is the history of the district once the
designation is official.
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